day no. 15,722: studying household good and promoting good works

God hath assign'd us, nor of me shalt pass
Unprais'd: for nothing lovelier can be found
In Woman, then to studie houshold good,
And good workes in her Husband to promote.
-- John Milton, Paradise Lost

Feminine strength is designed by God and peculiarly equipped to cultivate beauty, nurture life, make home, and make babies. Men are to recognize these pursuits as praiseworthy. Men were made to serve, provide, protect, and procreate to gain glory for God's great name. Men are obligated to praise others in their assigned posts under the main effort of bringing glory to God. It is a unified effort toward a common goal achieved by different detachments using different weapons and tactics suited to their assigned posts.

Adam, here in Milton, assigns praise to Eve for studying the household good and promoting in him good works.

Titus 2:3-5
The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.

Hebrews 10:24
Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works.

day no. 15,721: revenge begins sweet, but goes down bitter

O foul descent! that I who erst contended
With Gods to sit the highest, am now constraind
Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime, 
This essence to incarnate and imbrute,
That to the hight of Deitie aspir'd;
But what will not Ambition and Revenge
Descend to? who aspires must down as low
As high he soard, obnoxious first or last 
To basest things. Revenge, at first though sweet,
Bitter ere long back on it self recoiles;
-- John Milton, Paradise Lost

Satan aimed at Deity and ended up a dragon. His reach exceeded his grasp of reality. He aspired to the divine and found himself descending to the lowest depths. He who wanted to be the ultimate good became one willing to do the pettiest evil in order to get revenge. Pride transformed an angel of light into a demon of darkness. Envy and bitterness, wrath and revenge consume anyone who wants to be worshiped who is not worthy of such admiration. Only God can command worship without sinking to sin to acquire it. Revenge begins sweet, but goes down bitter.

day no. 15,720: sow in hope, reap in joy

Psalm 126:3-6
The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad. 
Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like streams in the Negeb! 
Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! 
He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

"Labour is light to a man of cheerful spirit; and success waits upon cheerfulness. The man who toils, rejoicing in his God, believing with all his heart, has success guaranteed. He who sows in hope shall reap in joy." -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

Christianity is founded upon the hope of resurrection. It is the crux, so to speak, of the matter. In order for something to spring up in resurrection joy, it must first be sown to death in hope. The one who dies to himself receives himself back and all things along with it. The one who lays down his life in resurrection faith and hope will receive back joy in 30, 60 and 100 fold abundance. 

day no. 15,719: do not consume or be consumed by worry

Mathew 6:34
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things

Do not consume or be consumed by worry

"Worry and anxiety are a waste of time. It doesn’t do any good anyway... You start living your life completely out of order. Worry is like thinking there is going to be a famine next year, and eating double portions at every meal now. It doesn’t work that way. 'Sufficient for the day is its own trouble' (MT. 6:34, NKJV) Worry is like a little greased piglet, and you are not going to able to catch it. And even if you did, what would you do with it then? Worry is not an adversary to be wrestled to the ground. Worry is not an adversary that you can just hit on the head with a chemical rock. Worry is a sin to be repented—as you would repent of lying, or adultery, or theft. You name it as sin, and offer it to Christ. And what does He do? He forgives it (1 John 1:9)" -- Douglas Wilson, The Sinfulness of Worry

Trying to solve tomorrow's problem with today's worry is like preparing for a marathon by spending more time on the couch for the fear of how much you'll be required to run next month. Worry exhausts your resources. It does not prepare you to endure future difficulty. In fact, it makes it harder. If you eat double portions of worry today in order to avoid a prophesied famine of tomorrow, you not only still end up experiencing the famine when it comes, but you invite additional disaster upon yourself right at this moment. Mass consumption of worry does not get you into the right kind of shape for fighting future battles. You actually end up depleting the very resources you will need to survive the future disaster by unnecessarily consuming them now. You also condition yourself  to consume more food than necessary exactly when you're about to have less food than you've ever had.

day no. 15,718: rocketsauce at SIX!

Rocco Henry Warfield Van Voorst... you are SIX years old today!!!

You did it!

No more naps... no more naps... no more naps!!!

Well, except for Sunday... but in fairness, everyone naps then :) The thing you seem to dislike the most about naps is that you miss your brothers and sisters. You are always very compliant when you're told it's time for nap, but you also often express that the hardest part is being apart from those you love most. Well, buddy... your day has come. You are six, and the afternoon... is your oyster.

You are such a smart kid. You catch on to things quickly. You are beginning your first year of official schooling, but admittedly, you've been teaching yourself many things already for years. You have a sharp mind. I am excited to watch you learn and grow through your schooling. It is so much fun hearing the things you think about. You are going to devastate the enemies of God. Their arguments don't stand a chance.

You are articulate. You like sharing your thoughts and talking about what you're thinking about. You have a way with words and impeccable comedic timing. You are always good for a funny comment here or there. You pay attention to what's being talked about and know how to keep up with your older siblings. You seem to be hanging back and then, blammo!, you drop a gem that makes everyone grin.

You are a handsome little man. You have beautiful eyes and a hard head. At night, you often pray about your future wife. You pray to be a good dad and husband. You have a vision for who you want to be and what God wants you to do. The world needs more good, strong men who are good at being men, and you, my son, are well on your way.

You have developed a recent interest in goatees. I won't hold it against you. I had an interest in them at one point as well. Just ask my senior pictures. 

You are physical. You love to hug, jump, punch, bounce, wrassle, squeeze, grab, etc... You are all boy. You bounce off the walls and play hard. You love to mix it up and you like getting in over your head. You seek out the challenge. You turn towards the difficulty, not away from it. That is man's move and all the more so since you're still only a boy. I can't wait to watch that instinct grow up. Darkness beware. You're about to be put on blast!

You are strong. You like your daily exercises and like showing off your muscles. You are thick and dense and muscle-y. You like wearing tank tops so you can show off your guns. You're all, "suns out, guns out," but not, "suns down, guns down." You're never not ready to play the man. You like being strong and that is leading you to become even stronger.

You have a good heart, a strong body and sharp mind. You are a dangerous little dude. The darkness doesn't stand a chance. I'm so glad you're on my team. :) We ALL are.

My prayer for you from the beginning, as you know, has been that you would be a cannonball for God's kingdom. Your middle name, Warfield, was given to you as an homage to B.B. Warfield, but also as a recognition that the cultural cold war seemed, even then, to be heating up and that the need for more good and godly men, trained in the way of worship and warfare, was becoming more pressing. 

So why "A cannonball for God's kingdom"? Cannonballs are formed and shaped in a particular mold. They are made a particular way by their Maker for a particular purpose. They are hard and tough and resilient. They maintain their shape when fired from a cannon and can fly through the air before crashing into an enemy's fortress. Cannonballs change the shape of the enemy's walls without being changed themselves. They are able to engage with the enemy without being changed by them. They are still hard balls of resolve after the walls fall down all around them.

May you, my son, also be formed fully by God's formation and submit to His plans to fire you off wherever He will send you and may you always retain the shape He gave you and change the shape of the world all around you. The gates of hell cannot prevail against God's kingdom and I fully expect you to play a pivotal role in destroying the demonic strongholds that surround us. As the diameter of light increases, the circumference of darkness grows, so if it seems like it's getting worse, its only an illusion. More contact and conflict with the dark is a sure sign that the light is growing in influence.

I love you, Rocco. You're a good son, a good brother, and a good man. I like being your dad. I love you and I like you. I'm so glad God put you in our family. We wouldn't be the same without you. 

Happy Birthday, Buddy!

Dad

day no. 15,717: non-excused absence

"Knowledge brings moral culpability with it. Natural revelation can certainly be called natural law. It has all the ingredients -- a lawgiver, a standard, a subject, and a moral responsibility." 
-- Douglas Wilson, Rules for Reformers

"There is a difference between an ideal and a vision. An ideal has no moral inspiration; a vision has. The people who give themselves over to ideals rarely do anything. A man’s conception of Deity may be used to justify his deliberate neglect of his duty. Jonah argued that because God was a God of justice and of mercy, therefore everything would be all right. I may have a right conception of God, and that may be the very reason why I do not do my duty. But wherever there is vision, there is also a life of rectitude because the vision imparts moral incentive." -- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

"We are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table." -- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

We have a moral responsibility and obligation to obey what God has revealed to us. In nature, we observe certain qualities consistent with God's character and commandments that are in keeping with the qualities He reveals to us in His word. In other words, His world is consistent with His Word and while not everyone has access to His Word, everyone has access to His world. As such, we are required to keep His commands and there are adequate excuses for refusing to do so. Ignorance is not an intellectual defect, but a moral one. We cannot claim even claim intellectual ignorance because every one of us knows on account of the sun coming up; and knowing them obligates the knower to do something in response to them -- something specific which if not done becomes a clear violation.

In other words...

Romans 1:18-23
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

day no. 15,716 continued... defined by who holds the transparency

"When the government knows everything about you, that's tyranny, when you know everything about your government, that's democracy." -- Cristian Terhes

Governments are defined by who is held to be transparent. The difference presupposes who owes whom an explanation and who is most likely to be hiding something.

A government which refuses to be questioned and insists on all the answers cannot and should not be trusted. Limited government is a Christian invention and when employed by grace through faith, it safeguards those in control from becoming tyrants and those under control from becoming tinder.

Where the people are given access to all the information, the representatives work for the citizens.; where the government is given access to all the information, the citizens become slaves of the State. Representative government is based on covenanted agreements. Federal comes from the Latin for foedus which means covenant, pact, or treaty. Federal governance is an arrangement of promises in which each party agrees to do something on behalf of the other. The representative agrees to act on behalf of the people at the mercy of the people as their elected head. The people agree to vest decision-making authority into the person they send to represent them. If the representative breaks faith with those they represent, the people are free to break out from under their headship. This is the premise behind the American War for Independence. The colonies grievance was that King George was not protecting them per their agreement. The consent of the governed was being abused by the absence of the governor in matters related to their safety, security, and prosperity. Thus, the colonists, confirming their heads abdication, set forth to elect new heads that would represent them faithfully.